Performance of multi hop CDMA wireless sensor networks with nearest neighbors based routing

Power conservation is one of the most important issues in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, where nodes are likely to rely on limited battery power. Bit error rate (BER) is the key performance indicator of an efficient network system. This paper evaluates the performance of a static CDMA wireless sensor network (WSN) in terms of BER, where the positions of nodes are more likely to be random. Data generated from the source node are received by the sink via multi hop. An intermediate node in the route selects the nearest node within a sector angle, considered as search angle, towards the direction of the destination as the next hop. Effects of node density, and search angle on average number of hops, average route BER are investigated. Average route BER is also estimated by incorporating automatic rate control (ARC) technique while maintaining a specific link BER, as applicable to WSN, and compared with the results obtained without using such automatic control.